Electronic communications are becoming more popular than ever, due in part to the increased variety and capability of portable electronic devices, e.g. cellular telephones, palm devices (PDA's), pagers, and laptop computers. A laptop computer can access the Internet, providing it has a modem or other telephone line-access device built in or connected to it. A recent advance in portable electronic devices allows access to the Internet through a modified cellular telephone. With such a telephone, textual electronic messages can be received and displayed on the telephone's screen, although only a few lines at a time. Prior to the present invention, a recipient of a message received through an Internet-capable telephone could reply by either of two somewhat deficient methods.
A first method of response was simply to place a conventional telephone call to the originator of the email message. This method has the problem of requiring the recipient of the email message to have, or be given, the telephone number of its originator, which is not always possible. The originator would then have to be able to access the telephone to which the recipient is sending the reply. The originator would also have to remember the original email message at the time of receiving a voice reply to properly appreciate or utilize the telephone response. Finally, the originator may have to go back to the originating device in order to reply again to the original recipient.
The second method by which the telephone recipient could reply to an email message received on the Internet-capable telephone is to type a text message on the telephone device The telephone device may have an ultra-miniature keypad which is awkward to use, a handwriting recognition interface which is prone to errors, or an alpha numeric (standard telephone) keypad. The problem with typing on the telephone device is that the keypad has only ten keys, far less than is needed for normal alpha use. The available solution to this typing problem is a system by which each of the keys can activate one of three letters by striking the key multiple times. In other words, the “2” key can be used for the letters A, B, and C by striking it once, twice, or three times, respectively. Not only does this system mean that typing requires up to three times more work than typing with a normal alphabetic keyboard, but the size and close proximity of the keys are such that typing is difficult and error-prone.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system by which a user of a portable electronic device can communicate by audio message to a text message email device.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a system wherein a text message includes a reply notice having a message-identifying number.
These and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent from the description to follow.